THIS MACHINE MOCKS FASCISTS

Dear God, Save Me From Your Followers

I don’t know how we managed it, but we’re on the call list for the National Coalition for Prayer, a group which, as you may imagine, is comprised of people who think prayer is pretty neat and that everyone should do it, although it’s unclear whether they care whether you want to do it or not.

We’ve asked to be taken off their call list before, but they are somewhat persistent, Ohio is one of the states that doesn’t happen to have a “Do Not Call” law, and they’re a non-profit organization, which is one of those little gray areas in the whole “Don’t Call Me” legal landscape. I suppose it’s nice to know that they haven’t given up on me yet; they seem to believe that I might yet pray. And I might, but only for a nice lightning strike on their call center.

I don’t have a thing against prayer, but as with so much relating to religion, I find that some of the people who do the praying stick in my craw. Especially the ones with a real sense of religious entitlement, and get snooty about it when you want to point out you have just as much entitlement not to have religion. As in this particular case, when the telemarketer got huffy because I asked to have my number removed from her calling list.

“Why?” She wanted to know. “We’re just a non-profit organization committed to restoring our nation to God.”

“Well, aside from the whole Constitutional ‘Separation of Church and State’ thing,” I said, “I just don’t want to be on your list.” They never know what to do with the people who are sticklers for the Constitution, you know. It’s such a vexing document that way.

I doubt seriously that I’ll be removed from the list, of course. They haven’t done it yet, no matter how politely we ask. The next time I’ll just burble on happily how much I love prayer; why just the other night, at the meeting of my coven, I was praying to Beazelbub himself to smite those nasty meek little Baptists down the street. And then we sodomized some goats, because, really, what’s prayer without a little goat sodomizing? And of course I would love if more people prayed with me. So many goats, so little time.